Blog Advertising, Teaching Social Skills

Since tomorrow is test day, I get to post whatever I want today. That means I get to talk about blog advertising, and an interesting article on teaching socialization skills.

First let me say I agree with the writer who said that kids learn social skills by what they see, and imitate in their every day lives. Common sense would say, if you want your kids to have good socialization skills, then we as parents should set a good example. Of course your kids do not just see you, and they way you act. They see other adults, and children, and they way that they deal with situations that occur. I once heard someone say it takes a whole society to raise a child. While I may not agree with that 100 percent, I do believe all adults should set good examples whenever children are in their presence. Whether it be their child, or someone elses child. Of course that is wishful thinking, but that is my thoughts on the subject. Here is the particular article on teaching homeschool children social skills. This article is on Homeschool.com one of my most favorite homeschool sites on the web. They have so much information, and useful links, it is amazing.

After one and a half years of blogging, I have finally made my 100 dollar Adsense payout. Now I have absolutely no idea if this is a common rate of earning, but I hope it goes faster as my blog becomes more popular. They have very strict rules, so people can not cheat, to earn money faster. If you have Adsense, how long did it take you to reach the 100 dollar payout?

Entrecard, the free service, that will drive traffic to your blog for free. They are under new ownership, but I still love the service. It is basically a traffic exchange. For every blog you visit, you should get a visit in return. It is not 100 percent, as some people do not drop every day. I like the diversity of the blogs to choose from, on their large database of blogs.

Adgitize, if you do not yet use this free service, you should. You can purchase ad space, and become a premier advertiser, or can have the free account. The leader board has 500 blogs, you can choose from to visit, and you get paid for your effort. That is the biggest difference between Entrecard, and Adgitize. While they are both free, Adgitize does pay you for the visits you make. It is not a ton of money, for free account holders, but it is something, and payout is 10 dollars. Yes, I have been paid by them. Plus I would say at least 75% of Adgitize members, also have Entrecard, so you could actually kill two birds with one stone. If you use Adgitize you must visit the blogs from their website, or your credits do not count. If you would like to join Adgitize, just click the widget at the very top of this blog.

I also use Traffic Swarm, and Twitter, for blog advertising. I don't have time to do these everyday, but they are somewhat effective. If you don't have Google Analytics, I would recommend it. It is free, and will break down, where your traffic comes from, and other elements for you. This blog, now gets almost 30% of its traffic from search engines. That is way up from the 5% it used to get. What methods of blog advertising do you use? Is it free, effective, or cost money?

Tomorrow DJ will be reading Chapter 10 of Dolphin Diaries, with summary. He will be moving on to Little House on the Prairie, starting Monday. I have added software work to Fridays, plus testing. Caitlin currently does no testing, but she does use the software. Tomorrow will be the first day DJ will be doing the software as part of class work. This software was purchased from Southwestern, and I paid 120 dollars for six discs. It is a complete curriculum for grades up to 5th grade. We finally have them all installed, and are ready to start using them. I will let you know whether we like them, and if they are worth purchasing again.

Monday, I will be starting a new contest. Sylvan contacted me again, and offered me a first grade workbook, to be given to one of my readers. So be sure to bookmark, and come back to enter.

Easter, Entrecard, and Adgitize

I hope everyone had a happy Easter. Below are the pictures of my kids Easter morning, going to church. The bunny cake, came out good, it was nice and moist. I think he looks kind of psychotic, but kids wanted no candy on it, just frosting, so you can see my artistic abilities with frosting drawing.

I would like to talk about Entrecard, for a minute. I have been reading blogs, and contemplating all the issues surrounding Entrecard. First I would like to know if anyone knows how we can cash in credits. I read their blog which explained the algorithim of who was getting paid, in what order, but there was nothing about how to do it. If anyone knows I would love to know too. I have been using Entrecard for a full year, and for a full year, it was completely free. All they asked was for us to be supportive to Entrecard. Now they want to earn some money, and I can not see how I can fault them for that. Running a website is very expensive. At first I was kind of peeved, because basically we were putting paid ads on our blog, and they were making money off of us. No I do not think so. Then they said, we could earn a portion of the profits, Ok that would work for me. I am accepting paid ads, but they do have to be in the category of my blog. All three of my blogs, are doing that. As for the issue of those who use their credits to exchange advertising only, on others blogs, I do not think 50% of the advertising space is unfair. Since it is free, and I am a member of Entrecard, I can not find fault with this. I do not want to pay for advertising, so biting the hand that is giving me free advertising, simply does not make sense to me. Yes I do spend a great deal of time, doing Entrecard, but it is no more than time I would spend at other Social Networks, traffic exchanges or other advertising means, and not get nearly as good results as I have gotten with Entrecard. So that is my take on Entrecard. I am still waiting to see how they sell back option is going to work.

Now to Adgitize. I am actually quite adgitated with Adgitize. I was making an average of 6 cents per day, and did make payout. Now I am clicking more of the blogs, way more, and my earnings are down to 1-2 cents a day. This will not work for me, should it continue. As with any other program I am a member of, I will give it 30 days, re evaluate, and then probably leave. I do not know why the earnings has decreased so much, but since I am doing more work, it does not make me happy.




Lesson Plans for 4/14/09:

Science: Earth Satellites
Writing: A satellite is heading for Earth, what will happen
Spelling: Lesson 27 Write each spelling word two times each
Vocabulary: Look up the definition for each vocabulary word
Math: Subtract 4 digit numbers, multiplication, division
Language Arts: Personal narrative, pronouns